Background: Research on the effects of music education on cognitive abilities has generated increasing interest across the scientific community. Nonetheless, longitudinal studies investigating the effects of structured music education on cognitive sub-functions are still rare. Prime candidates for investigating a relationship between academic achievement and music education appear to be executive functions such as planning, working memory, and inhibition. Methods: One hundred and forty-seven primary school children, Mage = 6...

BACKGROUND: Being born with very low birth weight (<1500 g) is associated with poorer neurocognition later in life. The aim of this study was to explore neurodevelopmental functions in those born with marginally low birth weight (LBW; 2000-2500 g). METHODS: This was originally a randomized controlled trial investigating the effects of early iron supplementation in 285 marginally LBW children. Herein, we explored the combined marginally LBW group and compared their results to 95 normal birth weight (NBW; 2501-4500 g) controls in an observational design...

Background: Historically, research investigating neural correlates of mentalizing deficits in schizophrenia has focused on patients who have been ill for several years with lengthy exposure to medication. Little is known about the neural and behavioral presentations of theory-of-mind deficits in schizophrenia, shortly after the first episode of psychosis. Methods: We investigated social cognition in 17 recently diagnosed first-episode schizophrenia (FES) patients with little or no exposure to antipsychotic medication and 1:1 matched healthy controls...

BACKGROUND: Prevailing theories suggest that autism spectrum disorder (ASD) results from impaired brain communication, causing aberrant synchrony among neuronal populations. However, it remains debated whether synchrony abnormalities are among local or long-range circuits, are circuit specific or are generalized, reflect hypersynchrony or reflect hyposynchrony, and are frequency band-specific or are distributed across the frequency spectrum. METHODS: To help clarify these unresolved questions, we recorded spontaneous magnetoencephalography data and used a data-driven, whole-brain analysis of frequency-specific interregional synchrony in higher-functioning adolescents and adults, with 17 ASD and 18 control subjects matched on age, IQ, and sex, and equal for motion...

Introduction: Multiple Micronutrient (MMN) supplementation during pregnancy can decrease the proportion of infants born low birth weight and small for gestational age. Supplementation could also enhance children's cognitive function by improving access to key nutrients during fetal brain development and increasing birth weight, especially in areas where undernutrition is common. We tested the hypothesis that children whose mothers received MMN supplementation during pregnancy would have higher intelligence in early adolescence compared with those receiving Iron and Folic Acid (IFA) only...

Schizophrenia (SZ) patients exhibit deficits in emotion regulation that affect their daily functioning. There is evidence that the prefrontal cortex plays an important role in emotion regulation. However, it remains unclear how this brain region is involved in emotion regulation deficits in SZ, and how such deficits impact performance on cognitively demanding tasks. We examined how happy and fearful emotional distractors impact performance on working memory (WM) tasks of varying difficulty (0-back, 2-back), and brain activity using fMRI...

PURPOSE: To reduce the radiation dose to patients by optimizing oncological FDG PET/CT protocols. METHODS: The baseline PET/CT protocol in our institution for oncological PET/CT examinations consisted of the administration of 5.18 MBq/kg of FDG and a CT acquisition with a reference current-time product of 120 mAs. In 2016, FDG activity was reduced to 4.44 and 3.70 MBq/kg and reference CT current-time-product was reduced to 100 and 80 mAs. 322 patients scanned with different protocols were retrospectively evaluated...

A central diagnostic criteria for autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is the qualitative impairment in reciprocal social interaction and a prominent hypotheses that tried to explain this impairment is the Theory of Mind (ToM) deficit hypotheses. On a behavioral level the critical test for having a ToM, the understanding of false beliefs (FB), is often used for testing ToM abilities in individuals with ASD. Investigating the neural underpinnings several neuroimaging studies revealed a network of areas involved in FB reasoning in neurotypical individuals...

Identification of a blood-based biomarker that can detect early cognitive decline presents a significant healthcare challenge. We prepared peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) from individuals who had a poorer than predicted performance in their delayed recall performance on the Logical Memory II Subtest of the Wechsler Memory Scale (WMS) relative to their IQ estimated by the National Adult Reading Test (NART); we described these individuals as IQ-discrepant, compared with IQ-consistent, individuals. Stimulation with Aβ + LPS increased production of TNFα to a greater extent in cells from IQ-discrepant, compared with IQ-consistent, individuals...

Increased intragenic DNA methylation of the Fragile X Related Epigenetic Element 2 (FREE2) in blood has been correlated with lower intellectual functioning in females with fragile X syndrome (FXS). This study explored these relationships in a paediatric cohort of males with FXS using Buccal Epithelial Cells (BEC). BEC were collected from 25 males with FXS, aged 3 to 17 years and 19 age-matched male controls without FXS. Methylation of 9 CpG sites within the FREE2 region was examined using the EpiTYPER approach...

OBJECTIVES: To evaluate the impact of digital detector, dose level and post-processing on neonatal chest phantom X-ray image quality (IQ). METHODS: A neonatal phantom was imaged using four different detectors: a CR powder phosphor (PIP), a CR needle phosphor (NIP) and two wireless CsI DR detectors (DXD and DRX). Five different dose levels were studied for each detector and two post-processing algorithms evaluated for each vendor. Three paediatric radiologists scored the images using European quality criteria plus additional questions on vascular lines, noise and disease simulation...

Importance: Despite apparent progress in perinatal care, children born extremely or very preterm (EP/VP) remain at high risk for cognitive deficits. Insight into factors contributing to cognitive outcome is key to improve outcomes after EP/VP birth. Objective: To examine the cognitive abilities of children of EP/VP birth (EP/VP children) and the role of perinatal and demographic risk factors. Data Sources: PubMed, Web of Science, and PsycINFO were searched without language restriction (last search March 2, 2017)...

BACKGROUND: There are concerns that developmental exposure to endocrine disrupting chemicals such as phenolic compounds and phthalates could affect child cognitive function. Epidemiological studies tackling this question have mainly focused on phthalate metabolites and bisphenol A, but not on the other phenolic compounds. Our study aimed to assess the relationship between in-utero exposure to phthalates, bisphenol A and other phenolic compounds (parabens, triclosan, dichlorophenols and benzophenone-3) and the Intelligence Quotient (IQ) of boys at 5-6 years...

AIMS: Heart failure (HF) incidence appears to increase among younger individuals, raising questions of how risk factors affect the younger population. We investigated the association of cognitive performance in late adolescence with long-term risk of early HF. METHODS AND RESULTS: We followed a cohort of Swedish men enrolled in mandatory military conscription in 1968-2005 (n = 1 225 300; mean age 18.3 years) until 2014 for HF hospitalization, using data from the Swedish National Inpatient Registry...

Adolescents' exposure to community violence is a significant public health issue in urban settings and has been associated with poorer cognitive performance and increased risk for psychiatric illnesses, including PTSD. However, no study to date has investigated the neural correlates of community violence exposure in adolescents. Sixty-five healthy adolescents (age = 14-18 years; 36 females, 29 males) from moderate- to high-crime neighborhoods in Los Angeles reported their violence exposure, parents' education level, and free/reduced school lunch status (socio-economic status, SES), and underwent structural neuroimaging and intelligence testing...

Background: One of the most reported neural features of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is the alteration of multiple long-range white matter fiber tracts, as assessed by diffusion-weighted imaging and indexed by reduced fractional anisotropy (FA). Recent methodological advances, however, have shown that this same pattern of reduced FA may be an artifact resulting from excessive head motion and poorer data quality and that aberrant structural connectivity in children with ASD is confined to the right inferior longitudinal fasciculus (ILF)...

BACKGROUND: Amplitude-integrated electroencephalography (aEEG) is used increasingly in neonatal intensive care and seems helpful in predicting outcomes at the age of 2 years. OBJECTIVES: To determine whether early aEEG patterns in preterm infants are equally useful in predicting outcomes at early school age. METHODS: We recorded aEEG in 41 preterms (gestational age 26.0-32.9 weeks) at a median postnatal age of 9.7 h (IQR 7.0-25.3) and in 43 preterms on median day 8 (IQR 7-9)...